Daren printed out the Page_Load() method using a half-spaced six-point font with two "screens" per page. He highlighted the buggy and incorrect code, spliced the pages together, and went back to The Director's office. In a move that may not have been the wisest career choice, Daren held the first page in the air above his head and let the other taped-together pages cascade to the floor. With over seven-feet of highlighted code in hand, Daren said: "this is what's wrong with the code."

YES. This was the correct response, career-limiting or not. I would pay good money to see the look on the Director's face at that point.

Daren printed out the Page_Load() method using a half-spaced six-point font with two "screens" per page. He highlighted the buggy and incorrect code, spliced the pages together, and went back to The Director's office. In a move that may not have been the wisest career choice, Daren held the first page in the air above his head and let the other taped-together pages cascade to the floor. With over seven-feet of highlighted code in hand, Daren said: "this is what's wrong with the code."

Oh wait, did you say that only the Page_Load() method was seven feet long ?

He's not a hero; he's a no-good interloper. As long as something works, that's all that matters. In fact if there more steps, tricks, and turns; that makes it more interesting. Anyone who modifies a system such that things are simplified is insulting the creator who was rewarded based on the level of complexity (not of the requirements, but of the solution).

Personally, I would have used a 12 point font, and regular spacing. That would have given him 14+ feet of highlighted code. The door might not have hit him on the way out.

Career suicide can be awe inspiring it you are standing far enough back not to get hit by the flying body parts (and blame). I once got to see a neophyte programmer do it by trying to suck up to the company owner. The owner had just finished tearing the entier programming staff a new orifice; and the neo's final words were ".... you must have kissed the blarney stone". The neo was never heard from again.

He's not a hero; he's a no-good interloper. As long as something works, that's all that matters. In fact if there more steps, tricks, and turns; that makes it more interesting. Anyone who modifies a system such that things are simplified is insulting the creator who was rewarded based on the level of complexity (not of the requirements, but of the solution).

I agree with the "As long as something works, that's all that matters" statement.

You need to keep it working and keep all changes you made rather secret.

As long as you can explain the changes to some intelligent mid-management person who can intervene and support you when needed.

This is the Catch 22 of IT: make it work without making any waves and at the same time make them understand you are doing something good for their organization and that you deserve your salary.

"If you do everything right, in the end nobody will know if you did anything at all."

My last job, I kept if more than 5 years and managed to keep it until the voice of the "The IT guy is not doing anything" people managed to overcome that of the "We need the IT guy" people.

Last I heard, the multiple IT shops supposed to replace all my different tasks are doing an awful job and end up being more costly than me, plus they don't have anybody to tell them how to do menial IT tasks (they also realized that nobody was ordering print cartridges anymore when they ran out on an important production day).

Sometimes you do not want to me confrontational, just shut up to keep the job and look around.

The real WTF is that he had to tape the pages together manually to get the desired cascade effect. Back in the good old days of perforated sprocket-fed dot matrix paper he would have gotten the effect for free.

Daren printed out the Page_Load() method using a half-spaced six-point font with two "screens" per page. He highlighted the buggy and incorrect code, spliced the pages together, and went back to The Director's office. In a move that may not have been the wisest career choice, Daren held the first page in the air above his head and let the other taped-together pages cascade to the floor. With over seven-feet of highlighted code in hand, Daren said: "this is what's wrong with the code."

Oh wait, did you say that only the Page_Load() method was seven feet long ?

He's not a hero; he's a no-good interloper. As long as something works, that's all that matters. In fact if there more steps, tricks, and turns; that makes it more interesting. Anyone who modifies a system such that things are simplified is insulting the creator who was rewarded based on the level of complexity (not of the requirements, but of the solution).

I am so glade I work where I do.... If we can show that a fix, modification, or whatever can improve the process and/or save money then we can nomrally get the green light to do so.

He's not a hero; he's a no-good interloper. As long as something works, that's all that matters. In fact if there more steps, tricks, and turns; that makes it more interesting. Anyone who modifies a system such that things are simplified is insulting the creator who was rewarded based on the level of complexity (not of the requirements, but of the solution).

I like to think of it this way: A ferarri is also really complex solution to a rather simple problem.

Likewise, a company can take their clients to McDonald's and it will satisfy their hunger, but they shell out more money to go some place fancy. Something finely crafted will always be appreciated more than something that just gets the job done.

I worked with Daren at the time, and I assure you it is all true. Every bit. I wish you guys could have seen the Visio mentioned in the story. It is literally 14 manual steps that had to be performed each month. And I saw the 7 foot long print out with my own eyes. I was cracking up at the time.

He said it was printed 2 pages per sheet, so it was most likely printed 2 portrait shaped pages, side by side, lanscaped on the paper.

Actually, as a computer screen is wider than it is long, I'd assume that he'd put two of them, top-to-bottom, on a page printed portrait.

I'd further assume that he was doing screen prints (ie, it was 'with two "screens" per page') taping them together, and highlighting parts, to visually demostrate how contorted & silly the report process was.

Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units. 7 feet would be 2 meters or so. Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World. My 2 cents.

He's not a hero; he's a no-good interloper. As long as something works, that's all that matters. In fact if there more steps, tricks, and turns; that makes it more interesting. Anyone who modifies a system such that things are simplified is insulting the creator who was rewarded based on the level of complexity (not of the requirements, but of the solution).

I like to think of it this way: A ferarri is also really complex solution to a rather simple problem.

Likewise, a company can take their clients to McDonald's and it will satisfy their hunger, but they shell out more money to go some place fancy. Something finely crafted will always be appreciated more than something that just gets the job done.

Ah, but when you go to the fancy restaurant, do you really want to pay $50 for a burger that tastes like mcdonalds but just took a lot more steps to create and often came back half cooked?

Likewise, a company can take their clients to McDonald's and it will
satisfy their hunger, but they shell out more money to go some place
fancy. Something finely crafted will always be appreciated more than
something that just gets the job done.

Yes, but as my dad always said: "This is not the Olympics. There are no points awarded for difficulty."

In a move that may not have been the wisest career choice, Daren held the first page in the air above his head and let the other taped-together pages cascade to the floor. With over seven-feet of highlighted code in hand, Daren said: "this is what's wrong with the code."

So he openly challenged the directors' judgement, technical know-how and budget spending. Of course a status-and-prestige-oriented personality would go for him after having ostensibly proved being a clear and present danger to his tenure.

Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units. 7 feet would be 2 meters or so. Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World. My 2 cents.

Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P

Thanks J! I appreciate the validation; I wouldn't believe this story either if someone had told me it.

Alex did a good job anonymizing the story, but all the pertinent facts are as he described them. And yes, Page_Load was indeed a couple thousand lines of spaghetti code.

One of the original authors of this was the same person who implemented a web service which accepted a serialized "object" as parameter. His approach was to de-serialize the XML from the SOAP stream into a C# object, then reserialize it into XML with a different schema (I've no idea why), then access the "properties" through XPath queries, rather than just accessing the properties of the C# object.